There are albums you can’t force yourself to probe deeply into, but once you do, once you hear and feel the music, you’re addicted. That’s the case with Nine Inch Nails’ latest album, “Year Zero”. Before the album had been officially released, it was wrapped in mystery. On the Internet and some radio stations there were several tracks circling, songs off “Year Zero” were downloaded from mysterious USB drives found in restrooms after concerts, and days in advance of the official release the band itself put the whole album up for free listening on their official site, as well as on their MySpace page. Musicwise, the overall sound of “Year Zero” is quite electronic, pushing the record more towards industrial than rock direction. Like on “The Downward Spiral” and “The Fragile”, here you could find a lot of desperate, improvised and less refined sounds that create apocalyptic atmosphere, too. Trent Reznor shed some light to what the album is like, explaining he’s been expressing his discontent and horror of Bush’s administration. The story takes place 15 years in the future when a totalitarian right-wing government has taken over the United States and controls the people possibly by putting drugs in the water and wages religious wars. Reznor explained that all the ideas in the album are based on things that are already happening... Prophetically, the album follows through the decay of human kind drowned in technical progress. “The Beginning of the End” tells of how people were subjected by drugs, delusion and false promises. In “The Good Soldier” the refrain “I’m trying to believe” is an ugly paradox on a background of downfall and death. Next are stories about the hatred and violence that have taken over men, about denial as the last asylum of reason... By the end of the album the idea that men are going to bring their own doom crosses over with the concept of aliens who will do it. It’s not about something paranormal, but about how alienation will efface our human features until all we are “zeros and ones” (“Zero-Sum”). This is NIN’s first concept record of which Reznor says it’s part of a bigger project that he’s working on at the time. As for “Year Zero” in particular, he claims to have written the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist. All that’s left for us to do is explore his music and ideas and hope to never witness the screenplay behind them...